Barefoot at the Lake Read online

  Rob and Steve ran ahead of us while Perry and I accompanied my uncle who moved faster than I ever thought he could. When we got back to the cottage, Angus was lying on the living room rug, panting heavily, with porcupine quills hanging around his eyes and mouth. Some quills were lying on the floor, the ones he’d managed to pull out himself. My mother was on her knees beside him, with Grace’s mother looking over her shoulder. No one spoke a word.

  ‘Angus!’ I said, but he didn’t even look at me.

  ‘Aileen, has he had his rabies shot?’ my uncle asked his sister, and she said he had.

  ‘Wrap him in a bath towel?’ he asked, and my mother did so. Angus let her.

  ‘I’ve removed quills from people. They’re like fish hooks.’

  He looked carefully at Angus’s face but didn’t touch my dog.

  ‘They’re so close to his eyes and I think he’s also been shot in his mouth. It’s best we have a vet remove them.’

  Grace’s mother told us she had gone to Mrs Nichols, used her phone, and the vet was at his animal hospital, which was near the fairgrounds on the far side of Peterborough.

  ‘May I come?’ I asked.

  With Angus lying on my mother’s lap, wrapped in a beach towel, me beside them and Uncle Reub in the front, Grace’s mother drove us to and through Bridgenorth, then on to Peterborough, down George Street to the far side of the city, past the fairgrounds to the Peterborough Animal Hospital.

  ‘What will the vet do?’ I asked and my mother looked at me, put her hand on my head, smiled and said, ‘He’ll make Angus better.’

  There was no one else in the sparse, green waiting room when we arrived, but the vet heard his door open and came out to meet us. He was older than my father, with wrinkled skin the colour of my baseball mitt. His thinning brown hair was greasy and he had a toothpick wedged in his lower front teeth. His tan-coloured overalls were stained with manure. I didn’t like him.

  ‘So this is the dumb jerk who thought he was a match for a quill pig,’ Dr Smith said, and he asked us to follow him into the next room. We did.

  ‘Ma’am, leave him wrapped and put him on the table.’

  My mother followed the vet’s instructions.

  ‘What is your plan of action?’ Uncle Reub asked, and Dr Smith replied, ‘To check out the damage then make the little bastard feel a whole lot better than he does now. I can see there are some in his mouth.’ As he spoke, he filled a glass syringe with a light yellow liquid.

  ‘I’m a medical doctor, an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist,’ Uncle Reub continued. ‘Do you mind my asking what you’re using?’

  ‘Not at all. Nembutal. Same as you use. I’ll give him a shot IM, wait ten minutes until he’s asleep, then get those mouth quills out.’

  Uncle Reub turned to me and said, ‘IM means into a muscle. The injection works faster if it’s given in a muscle instead of under the skin.’

  He turned to Angus.

  ‘OK now, little buddy. A quick prick and you’ll be better in no time.’

  Angus yelped when the vet injected the liquid into his hind leg and sure enough he was soon asleep.

  The vet rolled the toothpick around in his mouth then turned to me and said, ‘Son, come round here and I’ll show you how to remove quills.

  ‘Damn lucky. I’ve had to remove eyes from some dogs but your dog’s are OK. What’s his name?’

  ‘Angus,’ I answered.

  ‘Angus, my dumb friend. We’ll have you back chasing wildlife in a jiffy. Now this is what you do when I’m not around and you have to remove the quills yourself. First of all cut ’em short if you can, around an inch. They’re less likely to break if you do that. At home, use needle pliers to pull them out. Give each one a quick jerk. I’ll use this haemostat. All it is is a small needle pliers.’

  The vet cut the needles short and starting with the ones in Angus’s mouth pulled them out, one by one.

  ‘Your turn,’ he said and handed me the instrument.

  ‘OK, son, grab the quill with the haemostat then lock it. You’ll feel it click shut. Feel that? Now like you’ve just hooked a bass jerk it out. Fast. Good, son. Good. You’re a fast learner. I can have a smoke while you remove the rest.’

  I did, until all the quills were out. Angus snored.

  ‘Do you mind if I have a cigarette too?’ my mother asked. Grace’s mother joined her and soon the vet’s operating room was a fog of fumes.

  After I’d finished Dr Smith cleaned the small punctures inside and outside Angus’s mouth then said, ‘Now the bad news. Young Angus here is going to sleep until tomorrow then he’ll have one hell of a hangover, and the damage is fifteen bucks.’

  ‘Money well spent. Aileen, let me pay the vet,’ Uncle said.

  ‘Sir, if this is your dog it’s ten dollars. Professional courtesy,’ Dr Smith added.

  ‘And if you have an eye, ear, nose or throat problem,’ my uncle replied, ‘I’m at my sister’s cottage at Lake Chemong. Aileen, can you leave Mrs Nichols’ telephone number with the vet?’

  Driving back to the cottage, I told Mum I didn’t like the vet at first but now I did. I told her I thought vets only put dogs down. That’s what the vet did to Perry and Steve’s dog.

  ‘Vets are medical doctors just like I am,’ Uncle said, before my mother could reply. ‘The big difference is I have only one species to look after. They have all the rest, livestock, pets, wildlife. Did you see he had manure on his overalls? Before he made Angus better he might have been delivering a calf. Do you know why he had a toothpick in his mouth? Because now he’s going on a visit to see a robin with a broken leg and he’s going to use that toothpick as a splint.’

  My mother and Grace’s mother both smiled.

  Angus lay limp on my mother’s lap, snoring loudly as we drove back through Peterborough and then through the fields and forests to Lake Chemong. Then I remembered.

  ‘You didn’t get a chance to finish your story,’ I said to my uncle and he replied, ‘Remember how I said that Indian stories start in one direction then sometimes veer off in a completely different direction? That’s what happened today. The story started about all animals trying to live peacefully together. The bear was going to take us in a different direction. You might think he was going to remind us we should always check on stories we’re told – to get news straight from the horse’s mouth, but in fact he was going to be a bad bear, a jealous bear who resented that all the animals were following the rabbit. He was going to tell them that he was king of the forest and they should all follow him.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘What happened is that instead of a make-believe story you lived a true story today. When Angus needed you, you helped him and made him better.’

  As we reached Long Point Angus started to blink his eyes. It took two whole days until he was able to jump back onto my bed, two whole days before I could stop worrying about him.

  NEW

  NEIGHBOURS

  Each calm, blue day summer got prettier and prettier. The chill of the first nights softened and by mid-July I slept only on cotton sheets. The flannel sheets were put away until cold nights returned in late August. The days stretched out like cats lazing in the sun.

  In that sagging, naked heat, Grace and I, Perry and the other children, never wilted. We melted into a caramel brown but remained startlingly white under our bathing suits.

  Soon the sun started to take its toll on the land. The pasture behind the cottage singed but somehow the flowers on the roadside always stayed alive, turning their heads to the long summer sun. My mother was ever present but always gave us our freedom. If we were near the cottage, each morning before lunch she brought icy Kool-Aid, the very essence of summer, for us to drink. If we were away she went first to the back of the cottage and then to the dock and in each place she briskly rang her cowbell to call us for lunch.

  On weekends my father arrived and absently busied himself. There was always something to saw, something to build or to re
pair, and whatever it was it was usually made from wood. In the shade of the grove of cedars by the dock he kept his sawhorses and there he would saw and saw, golden sawdust clinging to the sweaty hair on his brawny freckled arms and deep chest. At his feet sawdust collected in neat little piles as he cut deeper into sun-warmed woody pulp. To me, the sound of wood being sawed was the sound of summer. There was an almost biological rhythm to the sound, a dignified thrum, calming, contemplative, relaxing.

  Our cottage had always been the last on the point, a dead end. Beyond was pasture where until early last summer Mrs Nichols’ three milking cows grazed and drank from the water. Last July, one day when I returned to the cottage, Mrs Nichols was there having a cup of tea with my mother.

  ‘Mrs Nichols has brought us some beautiful eggs,’ Mum said.

  ‘She tells me that Mr Everett wants his field back so we won’t be seeing her cows any longer. She’ll be grazing them elsewhere.’

  I thought only children found Mr Everett, who owned the next farm on the paved road, scary but now I wondered whether adults did too.

  When Mrs Nichols was leaving, my mother went to the door with her and holding Mrs Nichols’ hand in both of hers she said, ‘Everything will be all right,’ and kissed her on the cheek. Mrs Nichols looked startled, then smiled and said, ‘Thank you,’ and left.

  ‘Inside they’re just like us,’ Mum said to me. ‘Christians are just so embarrassed to show their emotions.’

  Then, at the end of that summer, builders arrived. They dug a foundation and now there was a big brick house, a year round house where the pasture had been, the first one that was built on the lake.

  I was sad when that happened. The lake was for summer. The rest of the year it should be abandoned. It should have its life back, alone, but now people would live there year round. Besides, I liked being ‘the end’, the last family, with nothing beyond. No one ever drove or walked past our cottage. Now, looking south, it was no longer wild. I didn’t see nature. I saw a perfectly manicured lawn. I didn’t talk about that, not even with Grace. It was too painful.

  But no one ever seemed to live in the big redbrick home. Someone came to cut the grass every week but the boat remained unused in the boathouse and seaweed gathered on the shore. From the time my father built our cottage I had waded in the water in front of where the new house now was, searching for crayfish, but one day a sign appeared on the lakefront, ‘NO TRESPASSING’. When I saw that sign I stopped searching for crayfish and returned to the cottage, where my uncle was sitting in his lawn chair, contemplating the lake.

  ‘There’s a “no trespassing” sign next door,’ I told him.

  ‘Is that so? Let’s have a look at it.’

  Uncle Reub took off his black shoes, rolled up his city trousers just above his knees, and walked gingerly into the lake. I had never seen him do this before. Ever. It was the first time I had seen my uncle get wet.

  We walked in the shallow water, only halfway up to my uncle’s knees, until we reached the sign. Uncle stared at the sign. He said nothing then he put his hands on his hips and turned to me.

  ‘There are lessons in life and one of them is that rules are made to be broken.’

  He bent down and with his hands on his thighs he looked straight into my eyes. ‘Always respect other people’s property,’ he said, ‘but a sign like that is like slapping your neighbour’s face.’

  Uncle Reub gingerly walked through the water; his toes were podgy and pink and soft like little sausages. His shoulders went up with each step he took, until he reached the shoreline. He looked up at the empty big red house, stared at it for a little while then he reached for the sign and uprooted it from the ground.

  ‘The fish will like this,’ he said, putting the sign in the lake, and we carefully retraced our steps back to our cottage.

  THE

  VEGETABLE

  PATCH

  My father bought the land he built our cottage on from Mr Everett, and that wasn’t easy. Mr Everett didn’t like Catholics and he didn’t like Jews. The Long Point Catholic and Jewish families knew this and had intermediaries buy their cottage land for them. When Dad told them he planned to buy land at the southern end of the point from Mr Everett, they warned him he might have trouble.

  When the day came for Mr Everett to sign the legal transfer of his lakefront land he turned to my father, narrowed his gaze and said, ‘Are you a Jew?’ My father replied, ‘I’m Scottish. I was born in Glasgow. That’s why my children are named Robert and Bruce, and my dog Angus.’

  ‘Are you a Catholic?’ Mr Everett asked, and my father replied, ‘I was born at 29 Ibrox Park Road. Do you think a Catholic would live within spitting distance of Ranger’s stadium?’ Mr Everett’s ancestors may have been English but even so he was aware of the rivalry between the Protestant Rangers fans and their Catholic Celtic Football Club rivals. My dad got the land without telling a lie.

  On a May spring visit earlier this year, Dad created a vegetable patch for us. He’d wanted to go to the cottage on his own that weekend, but Mum had told him he should take me with him. We went for two days. It turned out very cold for that time of year – like March – and Dad put blankets on the windows at night to keep the cottage warm. He let the fire in the fireplace burn all day, adding logs even after I had gone to bed.

  I was first up in the morning. I always was. Still am. I dressed quickly then lit a fire the way Dad had shown me, with dry twigs and scrunched balls of newspaper and old pine cones. I used the bellows to fan the kindling. It always sounded like popping corn on the stove as a fire lit up. Then I went out to the log pile and brought more logs in, not to burn just yet, but to dry first by the heat next to the fire.

  I made breakfast for my father. That weekend he talked more.

  ‘Good coffee,’ he said. He never said that to my mother.

  ‘Thanks for making breakfast.’ I never heard him say such things to her.

  After breakfast, Dad walked right round the cottage. He looked at the walls and the roof guttering, he got down on his knees and looked under the cottage where he stored his concrete breeze blocks and lumber. He inspected the dock and walked in and out of his boathouse. Finally he went into his tool house.

  In summer, even on hot days, he spent a lot of time in there, surrounded by coils of ropes, inner tubes, fishing rods, boxes of tools – wooden ones, iron ones – rusty painted jacks, hoes, crowbars, winches, fishing line and tackle, heavy chains, old tyres, ceiling tiles, rolls of linoleum, boxes of pine cones for the fire, bags of charcoal, old wooden chairs, oil drums, oil cans, lawn mowers, shovels, forks and spades, tarpaulins, fishing nets, guttering, cardboard boxes filled with rusty iron nails, washers, nuts, bolts and screws, sawhorses, lead pipes, old trousers, vices, glass jars and bottles, gas tanks, bait traps, worm boxes with the dried remains of last year’s moss and worms, kerosene lamps that were got out when the power failed, and it always did, with every single electrical storm. The tool house smelled of rust and rubber, tar and turpentine, varnish and shellac, fish scales and cedar. It was my dad’s favourite place in the whole world. If you’d ask him, ‘Do you want to spend a week at the Eden Roc Hotel on Miami Beach or a day in the tool house at Lake Chemong, everyone, even us children, knew what his truthful answer would be. Once I’d tried to tidy up the tool house and my father, with a stern voice he seldom used, told me to leave everything where it was. That’s when I’d realised it was a sacred place, like the Ark that held the Torahs at synagogue or the steps up to the church at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, and absolutely nothing, not a nail, not a rusty bolt, not an inner tube, not a piece of smelly rubber, should be disturbed in any way.

  That cold weekend my father planted beds of red tulips along the back of the cottage outside the bedroom windows. He loved colour and never planted white flowers, although he collected Queen Anne’s lace from the roadside to keep in vases on the kitchen table. He painted just about everything he got his hands on. After he’d painted the cottage white and the windo
ws and doors cobalt blue he painted every single plant container in the garden, dozens of them, the same blue. He painted the porch floor blue and the veranda floor blue. He even painted the old enamel hand wringer washing machine blue, the one he’d put by the well, filled with earth and planted with climbing sweet peas.

  Saturday was grey and horrible. Rain turned to sleet. My father decided it was too cold to leave the plants in the station wagon and brought them all inside where they huddled in the kitchen for warmth.

  Whenever there was a job to do my father wanted to do it right away, regardless of whether that was sensible or not, so he told me to arrange the plants in groups that were all the same. Wearing a green Army poncho to keep out the freezing rain he went outside and, in the stinging sleet that was almost like snow, he cut a patch in the grass with his spade, about fifteen feet long and half as wide. That was the spade we later used at his funeral to throw earth on his coffin. He lifted the turf from that patch in strips and laid it in the muddy, water-filled tracks his car tyres had made on the road. Then he forked the black earth. Dad said it was the richest soil in the country, richer even than soil in the fruit belt around Niagara Falls. In April that soil drank the last of the melting snow. In May and June it was nourished by spring rains and in early summer by the morning dew. Before he built the cottage, when my father had drilled for water, he’d only had to bore twenty feet before he found the freshest, sweetest spring water. The soil even got nourishment from below. I watched my father out of my bedroom window, forking the soil, and thought he was steaming like a train engine.

  After he finished preparing his vegetable patch, my father returned to the cottage, took off his poncho and sat on the rocker near the fire. Every line on his hands was blackened by the earth. His shiny, grey-flecked black hair and black, black moustache glistened with wet, and his freckles were lost in the red blush on his face.

  ‘Did God make all the plants and flowers and seeds in the kitchen?’ I asked.